Survey: Same-Day Recoveries for Majority of Cloud Storage Users

Posted on June 28, 2012 By Pedro Hernandez

New survey results from TwinStrata, a cloud-based backup and recovery provider, highlight the cloud's growing popularity as a data protection platform. Seventy-two percent of cloud storage users polled by the company claimed to be able to recover data within 24 hours, a healthy 10 percent lead over non-cloud-storage users.

A sizable number of those that haven't added the cloud to their technology mix reported not being as lucky, however.

"One out of every eight organizations that do not use cloud storage responded that it would take 'more than a week' to recover their data," said TwinStrata in a statement announcing the results.

The study was compiled based on the responses of 100 Cloud Computing Expo attendees, which took place this month in New York City. It also lends some insights into the state of cloud adoption among businesses. Seventy-three percent of those polled are employing some form cloud computing.

And SMBs are taking the lead. While 35 percent of respondents that represent large enterprises with 5,000 employees claim to have been using cloud computing for three or more years, the figure shoots up to 50 percent for SMBs with 51 to 350 workers.

Half of respondents representing organizations with 51 to 250 employees say they have implemented some form of cloud computing for three years or more, and 35 percent of organizations with 5000 or more employees.

There are also hints that cloud services are maturing, losing their upstart guise and becoming an established part of the IT landscape. Twenty-eight percent of respondents claim to have been using cloud computing for three or more years.

For several organizations, one of cloud's many benefits is peace of mind.

Off-site disaster recovery was cited as a perk by 40 percent of those polled. Simplified access to backup and archiving won over 37 percent of the survey takers, and 35 percent indicated that cloud storage is comparatively more affordable than making hardware investments.

Little wonder, then, that the cloud storage market is set to explode.

Currently, online data protection adoption rates are low. Only 29 percent of respondents admitted protecting their data in the cloud, reveals a recent InfoStor-Taneja Group cloud backup survey of 150 IT managers.

Those figures are set to change rapidly in the coming months, however. Between the next six months to two years, 58 percent of those polled are planning to move at least some of their data protection workloads to the cloud.